First Week in PE, SA!

Hello, friends, family and 6th graders!

I am safely in South Africa and just about to start my first week of teaching! Here’s a little bit about what is going on:

Monday-Tuesday, January 14-15

Emily (my education buddy from the University) and I arrived at the Atlanta Airport around 10 am on Monday, January 14th and began our 30-hour trip! We took 4 different flights to get to our final destination. From Atlanta to Washington DC to Senegal, Africa, to Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth, we were exhausted the whole way there. My carryon bag broke in the DC Airport (so, right at the beginning of our trip...), we didn't sleep the entire first half of our long flight, and we were so cranky and miserable by the time we got to Johannesburg. We saw the Congo soccer team at the airport and flew with them to Port Elizabeth (PE) and, apparently, they are SUPER FAMOUS. We should have taken pictures and gotten autographs! 

12 hours into the trip...

Landed in Jo'burg!

After we landed, our supervising Professor, Dr. Prakash Singh, picked us up from the PE Airport with his son, Kavish. He took us straight to McDonalds, even though we just wanted to eat some real South African food! I had never had a Big Mac, so I guess there’s a first time for everything!

Wednesday, January 16

We woke up and met our housekeeper, Zookie! She is the best. We had lunch and did a little shopping at an outdoor area called The Boardwalk and I bought a new bag and a beach towel. We then spent the longest time trying to find the office for our apartment that is actually 2.5 miles away. Total, we walked about 6 miles in our first day here. We spent a little time on the beach and had an early night in since we were still getting used to the time change and waiting for our 3 other roommates to get in.

Thursday, January 17

Today we took our time waking up and, for some reason, I couldn’t sleep so I leisurely read and worked out all morning. We walked to lunch at a place on the beach called Angelo’s and it was described as “Afritalian Cuisine”. It was GREAT and CHEAP- we will definitely be back! After spending some time on the beach and getting caught in an afternoon shower, we walked to the Pick ‘n Pay (our grocery store) to grab some fruits for breakfast, we waited out the rain and had dinner at a pizza restaurant called Charlie Superstar’s. They specialize in all sorts of different combinations, but we played it safe with a pesto, cheese and olive pizza. Later, our roommates, Maddie, Nichole and Liz, got here and it was so nice to talk to them and Skype with some friends back home!

Friday, January 18

Our first day visiting the school! We walked to Pearson High School and it took all of 4 minutes form our apartment, which is GREAT. We met Mr. Bubb (our supervisor at PHS) and he showed us around the gigantic campus and taught us some sayings in Afrikaans, which is good, because all students speak both it and English. The grade 8 supervisor asked if we could help with the Grade 8 Adventure Day tomorrow and, of course, we said yes so we will see what that’s all about! It made me so excited to start on Monday! We then just ran some errands at the market and we had so many that the manager just told us to take the cart home and bring it back!

Saturday, January 19

HOLY COW. “Adventure Day” is no joke! There is nothing like it in America! The school hired an outside company to give the students a series of contests and challenges around PE for almost 10 hours. It sounds normal, but the challenges were INSANE. For example, my station: the students had to stick their feet in a bucket of motor oil and fish out “treasures” only using their feet, then run to the automated car wash and get hosed down with soap and water and a pressure washer! They were all such great sports- no eighth grader in the US would have done that! The other challenges were things like bowling, “surfer rescue”, arcade challenges, human bridge, things like that. Then, we were asked to go supervise the “Hot Curry Challenge”- two students had to eat a plate of spicy hot curry as fast as they could and the fastest time won! We walked to the school and had lunch and began the afternoon’s activities which included normal things like slip and slide, archery, swimming and helicopter rides.

Yeah, you read that correctly. The absolute GROSSEST thing the students had to do all day was the spider web: students had to work as a team to get everyone through the giant spider web. The trick is, though, if a student touched the ropes in the web they were hit with a bucket of LIQUID COW DUNG. As in POOP. Not a joke. The best part of the day, though, was getting to know all of the students and teachers who have offered to be our tour guides while we are here. We went out to a very popular restaurant called Barney’s and it was delicious! Tomorrow is our very own Adventure Day!

Officially Pearson Educators!

The "Hot Curry Challenge"

COW POO.  GROSS!

Sunday, January 20

Today was so great! We went sandboarding and snorkeling with a group called the Freewalkers and their philosophy is so neat. They are a traveling organization that plans trips for tourists and locals with a spin on volunteer work and charity. For example, if we were to go on a weekend safari, they would ask us to repair a gate or a fence or something like that and we would get to do the trip at a steep discount! So cool! Today, we spent almost the whole day sandboarding and snorkeling. I can’t wait to go to the schools tomorrow!

That’s all for this week! Next week, we are traveling to a township outside of PE for some serious African culture including cheetah petting, traditional dances and food!

Lots of Love from the Friendly City!

Katharine / Miss Martin